Lasagne or lasagna

A lasagne (or lasagna in the USA) is the equivalent of a culinary hug. It’s a dish that subconsciously speaks “this is me taking care of you”. In any fortnight, one in seven Americans will eat lasagna at home and if people make a dish for someone who needs comforting, lasagne tops the charts. So here’s a recipe we all must have in our repertoire.

Then, dish out three ladles’ worth of meat to line the base of the lasagne dish.

Cover this layer with about a quarter of the dried lasagne sheets, overlapping if necessary.

Add three more ladles’ worth of meat on top of the sheets.

Then add around a third of the thinly sliced ham in a covering layer, followed by a third of the red kidney beans, and one of the sliced mozzarella balls, spread around as layers.

Then add the second layer of dried lasagne sheets as before, followed again by three ladles of meat, the ham, the kidney beans, and the mozzarella.

Repeat the process with a third layer of sheets, mince, ham, beans, and mozzarella.

Top this off with the last quarter of dried lasagne sheets.

Finally, ladle out whatever is left in the saucepan into the dish, and sprinkle it with the grated parmesan.

Cover the dish with kitchen foil and put the dish and the baking tray into the oven.

Cook for 1 hour.

Remove from the oven and check if the pasta is soft by pushing the point of a sharp knife through it. If not, return to the oven for another 10 minutes.

Allow to cool a little before serving.

Tips

All dishes of this nature – chilli con carne is another – will benefit from being left for a day before serving. Just allow it to cool sufficiently, cover with clingfilm, and leave in the fridge overnight. Then reheat the following day. You will find the taste has improved.

Trivia

Believe it or not, the Italian word lasagne comes from the Greek word lasanon for chamber pot. The Romans then borrowed the word with a boyish sense of potty humour to apply it to cooking pots, which they called a lasanum. The Italians used a lasanum in which to create this dish of layered pasta sheets, and eventually the word was transferred to the food itself – lasagne being the plural, and referring to the several sheets used in the pot. While the Italians and most others use the plural lasagne as the name, in North America the preference is to use the singular lasagna.